alternately titled: One Mom's War against Germs ;)
Livi got a cold last week. No fever, nothing crazy, just a lil drippy faced tired baby.
When one of the kids gets sick I usually really clamp down on the sharing... no one drinks after, eats after, shares licks of anything, etc. etc. until said sick kid is better. Well a few days into Liv being sick, Will started getting the same symptoms. Now they're all down with it. GAH.
I started tracking where the heck their germs could have been shared. (And yes, I know living/being together all day every day isn't helping my case here. It just helps me feel better to feel like I'm making a difference somehow.) Anyway, much to my dismay, I realized what was the culprit! Brushing teeth! Every night, all 4 kids brush using the same (not toothbrushes, I'm not that gross) tube of toothpaste, and use the same handtowel at the sink! No wonder they all are getting sick! How dumb of me.
So today after church, we made a stop at Wal…

we went to the opening night of the Philadelphia Flower Show. The theme was "Hawaii" and it was, as it is every year, a totally fab night!! :) I highly recommend the show, and it's free to the public every first week of March. It's an amazing experience!
Here are l-r, Kelsey (Jon's gf), friend Alezah, soon-to-be-16 (!!) Abby and me.

dan is a big steak lover. i am not, although i do enjoy them when he makes them. i just don't crave them and/or love them like he does.

anyway, every few weeks dan decides he wants to have steaks. so we stop at the butcher on the way home from church, and dan goes in and selects our steaks. the butcher is an old, cranky guy whose shop has been around since the 70's. apparently he likes dan though. so then later on, dan does his marinade thing, and the steaks sit in the fridge for a day or two. on the night we have steaks, i always feel like i should up my game with the sides. tonight we're having dan's famously awesome blue-cheese-crumble-topped steaks, and i'm making steamed asparagus, beer bread, sweet potatoes and orzo in cheese sauce. i'm excited to eat tonight. :)

i recently gave up facebook for lent, and apparently giving up facebook is what causes me to blog. (i did this last with the same results as well.)

huh.

i'm not sure why i feel the need to communicate with the great big world via technology, but for some reason i do. i also realized the other day while poking around the settings on my (heretofore little-used) blog that 41 people are following me, and (allegedly) reading every word i put out there.

that's a little strange. i have a lot of friends of facebook and i'm always careful of what i put on there because of that fact. i'm a lot less filtered and a lot more rambly on here. not sure if that's a good thing or bad. :)

in other news, my book club met last night and discussed book one of the hunger games series. i am not ashamed to say i was/ am a big fan. i've heard from a few people that the series goes downhill from here, which is a little disappointing, although not surprising. most books series do, in my o…

i'm home alone tonight. well sort of. dan's been asleep since 7-- after 28 hours traveling home from the philippines, he ate, showered and crashed.

the kids are all at a kids church event with a friend and my sister abby. my other sibs have all migrated south for the next few months already.

the kids and i spent 5 days in kansas city visiting my sister-in-law and her family. it was great, possibly the best thing i've done so far this year.

tomorrow dan and i head to philly for the flower show black tie event-- always a fun (and fragrant!) evening.

livi has a cold. she catches them more easily than the other kids-- but i don't know if it's genetics or age-- i feel like the older the kids get, the more infrequently they get sick. [shrugs] she's a little trooper though, and blows her nose like a champ, so i'm not complaining.

i have two big(ish) windchimes hanging from my back porch, and on windy nights like tonight i can hear them clearly inside, even with al…